Hey Brother,

I've been bodybuilding for a while, and made a whole bunch of diet and exercise mistakes in the past. Here's a couple ideas for you:

If you're maintaining calories but adding wieght, the culprit is usually one of three things: Added muscle, Catabolic State, or Water.

Added muscle, of course, is not a bad thing. The only way to tell if this is the situation, though, is to get your bodyfat tested. If the bodyfat is lower, but your wieght is up, congrats!

Catabolic state is not a good thing. It is also the main culprit for failed diets. Your body has two states, Anabolic and Catabolic. Anabolic is when you add muscle and burn fat. Catabolic is when your body stores fat. There are several ways to induce a catabolic state, and one of them is dropping your calories too low, too fast (this causes your body to actually store what little fat it takes in, because it thinks its starving). Another way to cause this is to cut too much protein out of your diet. Read up on the catabolic state online, or in any bodybuilding mag.

Water storage does not come from drinking too much water. Your body actually eliminates more water when it takes in more water, to a point. (there is an extreme level that some athletes will use to shed water, but that is a different animal...) 8 cups a day is a joke. I aim for one gallon a day.

What WILL cause you to store water is excessive sodium, spiked insulin, and not drinking enough water. For too much sodium, take a look at the average "diet" meal in the store. Tropical fruits and melons like pineapples, mangos, melons, etc spike the insulin. Yes yes, fruit is good for you. It has lots of vitamins. But it makes it so you cant burn fat while your insulin is spiked. Berries have the lowest insulin impact. Water depletion does the same thing as a catabolic state does with fat...the body goes into a water starvation mode (dehydration) and holds onto everything it can get.

Best of luck,

Joe